36 pages • 1 hour read
James NestorBreath: The New Science of a Lost Art
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Breathing as an Art and Science
A recurring theme in Nestor’s work is that breathing is both an art and a science. In the Introduction, Nestor describes breathing as a “lost art” (xx)—techniques that have existed for centuries and even millennia. Nestor attributes the rediscovery of these lost breathing techniques to a “rogue group” of “tinkerers” whom he calls “pulmonauts” (xx): “Civil war surgeons, French hairdressers, anarchist opera singers, Indian mystics, irritable swim coaches, stern-faced Ukrainian cardiologists, Czechoslovakian Olympians, and North Carolina choral conductors” (xx). Essentially, pulmonauts use artistry and science to push the boundaries of breathing, “redefining the potential of the human body” (xx).
Using successive examples, Nestor vividly demonstrates the transformative powers of breathing as an art form. Carl Stough uses highly unorthodox methods to help singers, musicians, athletes, and emphysema patients reach their full breathing potential. But the artistry of Stough’s work makes it difficult for others to replicate: “He was doing so many things at once […] The sensitivity of his hands, perfect pitch of his ears, the natural knack for instruction—all of it” (66-67). Even Nestor concedes that Stough’s methods are a “bizarre spectacle” that are just “too far out there” for conventional medical practitioners like pulmonologists to use (67-68).
Nonetheless, while not exactly embracing pulmonauts, the biomedical establishment is beginning to recognize the effectiveness of novel breathing therapies. Nestor’s own doctor sends him to an introductory breathing class to help with his respiratory ailments. Nestor cites numerous peer-reviewed, scientific studies that support the findings of pulmonauts and demonstrate the benefits of good breathing practices and posture—especially those that involve chewing hard and breathing slowly, less, and through the nose.
The book follows a pattern of corroborating the observations and innovative research of pulmonauts with more recent scientific findings, and completing the picture with Nestor’s own experiments. Nestor’s writing style weaves literary prose with technical, scientific explanations. Nestor concludes the book with a visit to a studio where he experiments with different Breathing+ techniques, a scene that brings together Nestor’s personal experiences, the cultural and historical significance of conscious breathing, and a context for a deeper, biological understanding of how breathing works:
The names may have changed over the years, the techniques may have been repurposed and repackaged in different cultures at different times for different reasons, but they were never lost. They’ve been inside us all this time, just waiting to be tapped. They give us the means to stretch our lungs and straighten our bodies, boost blood flow, balance our minds and moods, excite the electrons in our molecules. To sleep better, run faster, swim deeper, live longer, and evolve further (202).
Human Development and the Price of Progress
One theme that recurs in all three parts of the book is that human evolutionary changes have not always been for the better—at least when it comes to respiratory health. Evolution simply “means change,” and does not necessarily signal “advancement” or “progress” (12). Nestor explains: “Of the 5,400 different species of mammals on the planet, humans are now the only ones to routinely have misaligned jaws, overbites, underbites, and snaggled teeth” (12).
This theme has particular import when thinking about recent historical and environmental developments that have affected the health of humans. For example, Part 2 discusses the long-term effects of farmed foods and industrialization, linking these to a number of human-induced ailments known as the “diseases of civilization” (205). People’s diets changed dramatically with the adoption of agricultural foods, leading to less varied and nutritious meals. Meanwhile, the widescale processing, refinement, and preservation of foods presented another set of problems, as it eliminated the need for hard chewing: “Whenever [mammals] switched from harder foods to soft foods, faces would narrow, teeth would crowd, jaws would fall out of alignment. Breathing problems would often ensue” (134). Shrunken mouths, crooked teeth, and obstructed airways typify the physiological results of the Agricultural and Industrial Revolution, with 90 percent of today’s population experiencing some form of malocclusion.
The bodily degradations of mouth breathing, over-breathing, and consuming highly refined foods are examples of dysevolution—the “adopting and passing down of traits that are detrimental to our health” (13). Yet, these changes are not immutable, and Nestor provides many examples of humans countering these trends to improve their health.
Human Malleability, Self-Improvement, and Breathing+
The human body is highly adaptable, malleable, and flexible. What many assume as biological or predetermined givens—like bone density, lung capacity, or mouths and noses—are, in fact, not immutable and can be improved upon with low-tech solutions, even at advanced ages. Thus, while Nestor often provides laundry lists of modern maladies, like “asthma, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, psoriasis, and more” (xix), he is careful to note that these conditions can be treated effectively and even reversed “simply by changing the way we inhale and exhale” (xix).
Breath has a tone of self-help, as Nestor details the different methods that can fix deep-rooted ailments. The book tempers its scientific skepticism with a can-do attitude, even in moments of despair:
I spent a few days feeling sorry for humanity and then quickly set off in search of solutions. There had to be procedures, manipulations, or exercises that could reverse the past few centuries of damage from soft and mushy industrialized food. There had to be something that could help me with my own obstructed airways, and the wheezing, respiratory problems, and congestion I’d often experienced (117).
For Nestor, the answer to these problems resides just as much with the imaginative solutions of pulmonauts as with humans’ “force of will” (136), an inner determination that propels him to experiment with even more rigorous breathing therapies—as discussed in Part 3 of the book, Breathing+.
Not for the faint of heart, Breathing+ techniques push the body to extreme limits. Nestor describes these techniques as “the respiratory gauntlet required to get to the other side” (140). Consciously willing the body to breathe more, fast, slow, erratically, and sometimes not at all presents opportunities for realignment, for resetting the body and restoring balance or prana. While Nestor admits that breathing therapies, including Breathing+ “can’t do everything” (204), they can trigger physical and mental states that improve health, happiness, and longevity. To help readers achieve these effects, Nestor even includes an appendix, “Breathing Methods,” that provides step-by-step instructions and additional resources to practice good breathing and posture techniques.
